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Blog… not hit back

I’ve been trying to continue with Terin’s story in Converging Forces for, no lie, two weeks now. I’ve written reams of pages, none of which I thought, even at the time, was right.

How can it not be right? Because my voice was all wrong.

Get that? When I looked at what I wrote afterwards, it didn’t sound like me, let alone like the characters who were supposed to be talking or acting.

People talk about voices in your head, but that’s just funny. What, you get sick and you become a different person?

I’ve been writing on the blog during this time, and even then, it didn’t feel like I was hitting resistance… reaching for a coherent thought felt more like trying to catch a cloud. Nothing much there to grab a hold of, just some arms flailingly wildly.

Anyway, I can tell I’m finally start to feel better, because I sat down to begin writing the Converging Forces chapter all over again, and for the first time… it looks clear to me.

Hallelujah! I’m back, baby! I’m 100% solidly in the game!

(BBB would like to take this opportunity to thank his readers posthumously, knowing as he writes this that a meteor will be striking his house and hitting him in the head about 30 seconds after publishing the post. It was nice knowing you.)

I have to write a conversation between the main character, and, basically, freaking Gandalf. The challenge; how to answer questions accurately, be true to the personality, not be overly vague and cheesy because the guy really, really wants Terin to do this for him and wants to succeed, eh doesn’t want to like make it so he doesn’t know what he needs to know to achieve victory, but at the same time reign in this deus ex machina so as not to blow all fricken suspense out of the story?

I mean, jeez… I always hate it when some all powerful uber sensei is laying down the mission to the willing champion, and then later on you find that, like, dude, if he knew all this shit was waiting up the road, couldn’t he have, like, warned me to bring high explosives and some alligator bait? I mean, really?

Rope. Okay? Rope. He needs to bring rope. We don’t know why, or even if, he needs it, but dammit, you BRING ROPE.
What I’m trying to say is that vague, multi-purpose items are one way to go. Also, obscure or unexpected uses are one way to maintain the suspense even while giving a grocery list. For example, lettuce. Tasteless semi-food, water source, or material for umbrella used for jumping off cliff and surviving? Bonus points if said umbrella is stitched together mid-air.

About the only time I remember Gandalf being particularly specific about things were telling people to ‘Ruuuunnnnn’ as he plunged to meet the Balrog, telling Frodo that he had to take the ring to the mountain and then kicking a few royals/pseudo royal’s butts … the rest of the time he hintedish … so🙂 Klep’s suggestion works for me🙂. Actually I can’t think of any all powerful uber who was particularly precise …

And yet, I have what I feel is exactly where to go with this, and it annoys me, because I think it’s gonna be both precise, but also vague at the same time, and it feels like I’m copping out. But I’m the idiot who gave Terin the 5 minutes in the first place! Grrrr.

Someone like Gandalf can see all realities and all possibilities. They tend to be vague because any overt clues as to the nature of things might cause reality to completely change. Think about it this way in one reality he might need a rope, in another he might need a banana, in yet another he might need an F-22. There are probably so many possibilities swirling around in his head that he just sits quiet and it becomes a game to him to see which one is actually chosen. Knowing all that was and all that can be must be so confusing and maddening at times.